Greenpeace Co-Founder: Climate Alarmists Would Kill Civilization

PARIS — If left unchecked, climate alarmists at the United Nations and within the broader man-made global-warming movement would smash industrial civilization, killing untold millions in the process, Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore explained in Paris as the UN COP21 climate summit was taking place nearby. Fortunately for humanity, though, the radical agenda is predicated on discredited pseudo-science.

Speaking in the French capital at the Heartland Institute's “Day of Examining the Data” summit, which brought together respected scientists and experts from around the world to discuss the climate issue, Dr. Moore denounced what he described as the “anti-human” ideology that he said had infected much of the “green” movement. In fact, the notion that people are the “enemy” of the planet is what eventually forced him to part ways with his former colleagues at Greenpeace.

In an interview with The New American after his presentation debunking “ocean acidification” hysteria, Moore said the real agenda behind the UN climate summit was bringing down industrial civilization under the guise of “saving” the planet from humanity. If successful, he said, the lives of countless human beings would be lost as a result of energy famines.

“They are saying that by destroying civilization, we will save the world,” Dr. Moore explained, referring to climate alarmists gathered in Paris for the massive UN global-warming summit last month. “I don't buy it.”

“It is so preposterous what they are proposing,” continued Moore, a scientist who also served as the president of Greenpeace Canada and director of Greenpeace International. “They are proposing the end of civilization as we know it, because they are proposing not only an end to 85 percent of our energy supply, which is fossil fuels, but they also oppose nuclear energy and hydroelectric energy, with few exceptions.”

The real agenda, then, is not just about “climate,” Moore explained. “It is about the destruction of modern civilization.”

The excuse for the agenda — the anthropogenic (man-made) global-warming theory — is becoming increasingly discredited, he added.

“I actually do not believe that humans are driving a catastrophic change in the global climate,” he said. “There is no evidence of it, there is no proof of it.”

Now, with their predictions on global temperatures foundering after 18 years and counting with no warming, alarmists have been reduced to pointing to every weather event as alleged evidence supporting their theory. “That's all they have left to hang their hat on,” he said, adding that the facts show a decrease in hurricane and tornado activity in recent years.

Moore also lashed out at the blatant deception employed in the climate debate. “It amazes me that they are using pictures of the air pollution in China as if that's part of climate change,” he said. “Now we've been taught to think that carbon dioxide is a pollution, so I think they're using that because people will think you can see the carbon dioxide.”

He said it would be great if the smoke in China were cleaned up, noting that wealthy countries have already done so precisely because they are wealthy. “There's a very clear curve,” he said. “As countries become industrialized, the pollution gets worse and worse and worse until people finally have enough money that they look around and they go, 'hey, I've got enough money, I can pay a little more to get that cleaned up, because I don't like breathing this dirty air,' and then it goes down. That's happened in all the Western industrial countries — the water is cleaner, the air is cleaner.”

In an interesting twist, Dr. Moore praised Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for, among other efforts, reining in out-of-control “green” groups seeking to keep the people of India trapped in perpetual poverty to supposedly stop global warming.

“What he wants to do is give 300 million people electricity and toilets,” Moore said about Modi. “It seems to me that is not a bad priority.”

In order to do that, India will have to build a lot of coal and nuclear power plants, both of which Greenpeace opposes. “They have had the guts to kick [Greenpeace] out,” Moore said, referring to Greenpeace's threat to Indian economic security as “a kind of sedition.”

Similar anti-energy collusion, with hundreds of millions of dollars coming from the United States, is being aimed at Canada, too, Moore said. In particular, he pointed to collusion between “greens” and the “power structure in the United States” seeking to crush Canada's energy industry.

Attendees at the UN COP21 summit, Moore said, “want the de-industrialization of our society.” The goal, he said, is to go back to a world prior to the industrial revolution, which lifted billions out of poverty and drastically extended human lifespans.

“That's what they're saying they want us to do,” Moore explained, citing numerous prominent people, including some celebrities with yachts and private jets, openly making precisely that argument.

Calling climate alarmism a “fad,” he said it was time for it to end. “It has no basis in science, it has no basis in any real understanding of how this world works, and it is a definite threat to the further uplifting of billions of people in the world out of poverty and the maintenance of the good life we have found ourselves in,” Moore argued.

Abundant and reliable energy supplies, Moore added, have enabled humans to live longer, healthier lives and to enjoy great amounts of personal freedom and prosperity. “Freedom, longevity, and prosperity are all good things,” he said. “And so, before we destroy those things, we should think twice, or ten times.”

Unfortunately, Dr. Moore said, he is not optimistic about the facts and the truth coming out on top any time soon. “For decades, Lysenko under Stalin prevented geneticists from studying genetics, and sent the best ones to the gulags to die,” he explained, adding that Russian scientists today, having apparently learned their lesson, generally do not buy into the man-made global-warming hypothesis.

In his speech at the Heartland Institute's summit, Dr. Moore debunked one of the key remaining narratives used by alarmists to promote climate hysteria and anti-human policies: alleged “ocean acidification” supposedly caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide.

In the real world, he said, there is “no conceivable scenario” in which the world's oceans would become acidic. “It is a complete fabrication with no basis in reality,” Moore explained.

Like other experts speaking at the summit, Moore pointed out that CO2 is in fact a hugely beneficial gas for life on earth — and in the oceans. Indeed, Dr. Moore noted that the most productive area of the world's oceans, the Humboldt Current off the Pacific coast of South America, is also the most “acidic.”

“CO2 is fertilizing the oceans just like it is greening the Earth,” he said.

Numerous other experts at the Heartland summit and another counter-COP21 conference in Paris also gave speeches and interviews debunking various elements of the UN's climate-catastrophe narrative. For more on those summits, the UN gathering, and the global-warming issue, see the links below under “related articles.”

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU.

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